Abstract

Aging and major depressive disorders have been associated with impaired cognitive control. These deficits are also influenced by the affective valence and by the type of stimulus processed. Using an emotional Stroop task, the current study aims to examine cognitive control deficits and their association with emotion regulation in depression and the influence of the type of stimulus (words and faces) in this association. A total of 26 older patients with a major depressive disorder (MDD) (19 women; age range: 65–84 years) and 26 older healthy controls (18 women; age range: 65–80 years) participated in the study. The results showed that MDD individuals presented greater Stroop effects than their healthy controls and an absence of the conflict adaptation effect defined as a reduction of the influence of irrelevant stimulus dimensions after incongruent trials. Additionally, our results also showed that the processing of emotional words in depressed participants is more automatic than the processing of emotional faces. These findings suggest that older depressed individuals have greater difficulty in recognizing affective facial expressions than older healthy controls, while the over-learned behavior of word reading greatly reduces differences in the performance of the emotional Stroop task between groups (MDD and healthy controls).

摘要

衰老和重度抑郁症与认知控制受损有关。这些缺陷也受到情感效价和处理的刺激类型的影响。使用情绪 Stroop 任务，当前的研究旨在检查认知控制缺陷及其与抑郁症情绪调节的关联以及刺激类型（言语和面部）在该关联中的影响。共有 26 名患有重度抑郁症 (MDD) 的老年患者（19 名女性；年龄范围：65-84 岁）和 26 名老年健康对照者（18 名女性；年龄范围：65-80 岁）参与了这项研究。结果表明，MDD 个体比他们的健康对照组表现出更大的 Stroop 效应，并且没有冲突适应效应定义为在不一致的试验后减少不相关刺激维度的影响。此外，我们的结果还表明，与情绪面孔的处理相比，抑郁参与者对情绪词的处理更加自动化。这些发现表明，与年长的健康对照组相比，年长的抑郁个体更难以识别情感面部表情，而过度学习的单词阅读行为大大减少了组间情绪 Stroop 任务表现的差异（MDD 和健康对照组）。我们的结果还表明，与情绪面孔的处理相比，抑郁参与者对情绪词的处理更加自动化。这些发现表明，与年长的健康对照组相比，年长的抑郁个体更难以识别情感面部表情，而过度学习的单词阅读行为大大减少了组间情绪 Stroop 任务表现的差异（MDD 和健康对照组）。我们的结果还表明，与情绪面孔的处理相比，抑郁参与者对情绪词的处理更加自动化。这些发现表明，与年长的健康对照组相比，年长的抑郁个体更难以识别情感面部表情，而过度学习的单词阅读行为大大减少了组间情绪 Stroop 任务表现的差异（MDD 和健康对照组）。